• The last exercise of the week was a collaborative work in which
each interaction design student had to animate a red dot from
the left to the right of the canvas. The sequences in between
the two known states were totally open for the students to
explore. This particular scene uses everyday objects (in this
case mustard, candy, and cardboard). The designer carrying out this animation has an initial vision but also improvises
and changes course during the shoot, keeping his animation
materials in close reach at all times. The camera (not seen
in the picture) is mounted over the table and connects to the
computer with live preview software installed, which allows the
animator to constantly monitor the next frame against the previous ones. See the video at: http://vimeo.com/17263496/
a computer interface, the seamless
experience of a ubiquitous environment, or the pliable quality of a mul-titouch system.
To find ways of dealing with some
of these qualities, we have explored
the potential of stop motion animation as a sketching technique.
March + April 2011
interactions
improving it, and differences and
similarities between sketching and
prototyping—is still not a major
topic. This seems rather surprising on many levels, mostly because
digital artifacts generally have
qualities and characteristics that
are hard to capture with traditional
means of sketching. Pen and paper
are excellent for thinking through
and catching the spirit of a new car,
a table, or a building, but they cannot as effectively capture the flow of
Stop Motion Animation
Stop motion animation, sometimes
called stop-frame animation, is a
basic form of animation typically
applied to make everyday physical
objects appear to be alive. It builds
on moving objects in small increments between individually photographed frames; when the series of
slightly different pictures is combined and played back in continuous
sequence, magic happens. The illusion of movement is created.
For example, to bring an ordinary
object, such as an office chair, to
life, stop motion animators would
set up a digital camera, typically
on a tripod, and prepare the scene,
i.e., what the camera sees from its
position. The office chair is then
moved around in front of the cam-
era in small increments, with the
animators capturing a new photo in
between each manipulation. Using
the same step-by-step technique,
the chair is not only able to move
but also to jump, turn, twist, fly,
stand on two legs, and so on, using
relatively simple means to defy
gravity: fishing lines, sticky tape,
and wiring. Substitution materi-
als such as foam, cellophane, and
chicken wire can also be applied cre-
atively to make the chair disappear
in a puff of smoke, turn into fluid, or
morph into another object.
